Better summary:
For those of you who don't know me, I'm a 21 year old online poker player that has experienced a lot of success at Absolute Poker for the last year, making well into 6 figures, starting from 50 dollars. I did this not through luck, but hard work and determination to make myself a better player. Although I'm by no means the best online poker player in the world, there is no doubt that I'm in the top 1% of players online.
On a fateful night in August, I found what looked liked to be an extremely good game on Absolute. The player DOUBLEDRAG was playing almost every single hand he got preflop, a typical good player plays 20-25% of their hands. I play extremely loose, sometimes playing up to 40% of my hands. The problem with playing nearly 100% of your hands is that most of the time, someone is going to be starting with a better hand than you, so unless you catch better cards than your opponents or force them to fold, you will end up losing money. I can get away with sometimes playing 40% of my hands because I'm an extremely good postflop player, but I still end up losing some hands. DOUBLEDRAG literally never called a river bet when he had the worst hand. I was frustrated, but I thought he was getting extremely lucky and I'd break him later.
About two weeks later, in a tournament, the player POTRIPPER won a 1k buy-in tournament event on this hand:
Stage #896976330 Tourney ID 1883389 Holdem Multi Normal Tournament No Limit $4500 - 2007-09-13 01:43:49 (ET)
Table: 14 (Real Money) Seat #3 is the dealer
Seat 3 - POTRIPPER ($765740 in chips)
Seat 8 - CRAZYMARCO ($214260 in chips)
POTRIPPER - Ante $450
CRAZYMARCO - Ante $450
POTRIPPER - Posts small blind $2250
CRAZYMARCO - Posts big blind $4500
*** POCKET CARDS ***
POTRIPPER - Calls $2250
CRAZYMARCO - Checks
*** FLOP *** [4h Kd Kh]
CRAZYMARCO - Checks
POTRIPPER - Bets $9000
CRAZYMARCO - Calls $9000
*** TURN *** [4h Kd Kh] [7s]
CRAZYMARCO - Checks
POTRIPPER - Bets $13500
CRAZYMARCO - All-In(Raise) $200310 to $200310
POTRIPPER - Calls $186810
*** RIVER *** [4h Kd Kh 7s] [5s]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
POTRIPPER - Shows [10c 9c] (One pair, kings)
CRAZYMARCO - Shows [9h 2h] (One pair, kings)
POTRIPPER Collects $428520 from main pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total Pot($428520)
Board [4h Kd Kh 7s 5s]
Seat 3: POTRIPPER (dealer) (small blind) won Total ($428520) HI
$428520) with One pair, kings(ten kicker) [10c 9c - B:Kh,B:Kd,P:10c,P:9c,B:7s]
Seat 8: CRAZYMARCO (big blind) HI:lost with One pair, kings [9h 2h - B:Kh,B:Kd,P:9h,B:7s,B:5s]
So what does that hand mean? It means that this player made a call with absolutely no hand and just happened to be right. Now, I'm all for fish getting lucky once in awhile, but this hand sparked more investigation, and what was found was truly disturbing. Hand histories from the tournament from multiple players were gathered and analyzed. It was found that POTRIPPER played exactly like DOUBLEDRAG. The only times POTRIPPER folded preflop was when someone else had AA, KK or QQ. POTRIPPER also never called a river bet when he was beat.
When the news of POTRIPPER came out, I immediately thought of DOUBLEDRAG and submitted my hand histories of that session to some of my peers who are the best players I know. It was obvious to everyone that DOUBLEDRAG knew what there opponents cards were. They all concluded that it was the only explanation for both players playing nearly all their hands, except when someone hand a monster preflop. They all concluded it was the only explanation for the fact they never called a river bet when they were beat, as this is extremely unlikely when you are playing so many hands.
So what is happening in response to this? Absolute Poker claims that it is investigating the matter, but many people do not trust the site to admit that someone was able to cheat on this magnitude, as it would hurt their business severely. The only way to make sure that Absolute handles this situation promptly and fairly is to escalate this story in the poker media and to keep harassing Absolute's security and customer service department. You may not have been cheated out of any money, but a strike this deep into online poker's integrity is bad for everyone and needs to be dealt with promptly.